


Do you have a candle?

by emissaryarchitect



Category: Ava's Demon
Genre: Other, gil confronts some stuff and ava scares the shit out of him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emissaryarchitect/pseuds/emissaryarchitect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stormy nights and stormy minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do you have a candle?

**Author's Note:**

> Ava and Gil have a chat.  
> It doesn't end well.

“I like rain,” Ava spoke softly, elbows leaned on the windowsill with her hands cupping her cheeks “it’s so serene.”

“I agree,” Gil nodded, standing behind her with his hands folded neatly.

They stared in a dreamlike wonder at the grey sky, the roof being delicately sprinkled with rain, running down the windows in tiny tributaries, pooling outside into what would be a damp and cool night.

“I-It’s b-bullshit,” Odin scowled “I-I’m g-going to b-bed.”

He stomped upstairs while Gil and Ava exchanged a look – they both knew of his dislike for large bodies of water, but neither of them suspected it stretched as far as something as harmless and musical as rain.

Thunder clapped in the distance, a mighty roar of the skies, and they traded smiles.

“Rain always reminded me of home,” Gil explained lightly, pulling up a chair to watch the window along with Ava. “Water is such a pure, clean thing.”

“Home?” Ava echoed quietly, dozing as the sun set and the sky was enveloped in a cape of pitch blackness. Gil nodded, unwilling to reveal any more personal information about himself – but there was an ache of bitterness that cinched on his spine, making him fidget and frown unhappily.

TiTAN HQ used to be his home – and now it couldn’t be. He had hoped his one true home would be Paradise, but if what Nevy said was true…

Lightening flashed near the cabin, crackling and bright enough to make him flinch. “Ah… perhaps we shouldn’t sit so close to the windows,” he suggested, but Ava just shrugged.

“What’s the worst that’ll happen?” she questioned lowly, and the words _oh, I don’t know, **death** _ sat precariously on the tip of his tongue, before he remembered the by-product of a pact. He couldn’t die now.

Why was he so scared, then?

Lightning struck again and he still flinched at its brightness while Ava stared on, unperturbed. She had accepted this immortality easy, but how? It was such a strange burden to carry.

“How is it,” he began slowly, trying to pull his thoughts together into a cognitive sentence “that you don’t seem to fear anything? I understand knowing that you won’t die, but-”

“I don’t think of this the same way you or Maggie does,” she scratched her arm absently “because you both see this as an extension of life.”

“What do you see it as, then?”

She kept scratching her arm. “An extension of death.”

Lighting struck again, flashing outside the window, illuminating Ava’s face with an eerie, ghostly glow that made her look almost corpse-like in appearance – unmoving, half lidded and limp against the windowsill – Gil took a step back without realizing it.

She lazily looked up at him, tilting her head in a languid movement, digging her claws into her arm. “What?”

He swallowed hard, feeling a lump in his throat. “Ah- nothing, the… flash just startled me. She looked back out the window, and he could see a faint glimmer from her horns, her tipped ears pulling back strands of her hair, the way her claws kept sinking into her arm but never breaking the skin, and his hand automatically flew to his pact, holding it as though it might grow larger.

“What’s it like,” he asked suddenly, voice seizing painfully “when you take a vial?”

Ava sat back, drawing her elbows away from the windowsill, setting them carefully on her lap. She looked down at her hands, her hair draping in front of her face, a curtain of red across the blue hued night.

“Everything you’ve ever bottled up,” she replied tiredly “takes over you.” She sounded as though she was exhausted – like Gil had caught her in the middle of a thousand year battle and she was a long fatigued veteran. “It eats up all your restraints, and you just sort of… explode. You can’t stop yourself. If you think of something you want, you can’t rationalize. You can’t talk yourself down.” She braided her fingers together and closed her eyes, her chin touching her collarbone. “You _do_ it.”

“What did you want? That day, at HQ – what was it that you wanted?”

“Lots of things.” Her voice clipped sharply as she sat back up and turned to him, rain hitting the roof in steady rhythm, her eyes glowing in an ominous gold. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m – I’m scared,” he admitted, twisting his shirt. “I’m afraid of what I might turn into.”

“That’s the worst part,” Ava laughed listlessly, looking back into the rain “You don’t turn _into_ anything. You just _become_ everything you’ve ever buried. Everyone gets to see whatever it is that keeps you up at night.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, and suddenly, she looked very small. “That doesn’t make it any better, though.”

The sky rumbled, and the cabin shuddered on its foundation. Without warning, the light flickered, and finally went out, the bulbs suddenly lightless.

“Oh no,” Gil put a hand to his head “the power went out. The lightening must have hit something…”

“Do you know how to turn it back on?”

“My house had a generator, but I’m not sure about Odin’s…” he put a thumb between his teeth and bit the nail anxiously, trying to locate anything in the dark, static shadows warping and dancing in his eyes with the strain. “It’s almost pitch black – do you have a candle, by any chance?”

“No,” Ava replied, “but… I’ve been practicing… maybe…” Gil looked over to her silhouette curiously, finding a small glow around her flesh, but even more interesting was her hands cupped together as she focused intensely, her brows furrowed her and her lower lip pinched between her teeth as she concentrated. After a moment, a spark in her hands – and then, a faint flicker, before the tongue of a flame emerged with a white-hold center, the flame casting fantastic light.

“Huh,” Gil remarked aloud, examining the light until dark splotches began imprinting in his eyes “so you can control it?”

“Barely,” Ava admitted “but, I’m getting there.”

They walked around the house, finding the raging storm outside to be somber and malicious instead of the dull lullaby from earlier. They found a few lamps, one of which they set on the table, and Ava transferred the light in her palms into the glass center.

“It’s a good thing Odin is a mountain man,” Gil noted aloud as he held up the lantern before setting it back down. Ava nodded, but she was back to staring out the open windows.

“That’s your element, you know,” she spoke with a serious edge in her tone that was rarely heard. “The water – you could try something.”

“Try what?” he questioned, baffled, running a hand through his hair, feeling the silky silver locks between his fingers. “Try – try stopping the rain?”

“It’s _worth_ a shot,” she suggested. “You won’t know what your powers can do until you practice.”

He looked out the window, at the darkness, the sound of the storm outside, roaring and striking the earth so destructively.

“I don’t think so,” Gil walked forward and began closing the curtains, shuffling them shut. “That can wait.”

“Until when?” Ava was at the other curtain, keeping it open, showing the turmoil of the storm outside, how it flashed and hissed and beat so hatefully on the house and the forest. “Until we’re being attacked by someone?”

“It’s late, and maybe if I talk to Nevy-”

“Why do you keep avoiding the pact?” Ava pressed, her palm on the curtain beginning to burn the fibers “Why did you even make a pact if you’re not going to _use_ it?”

“That’s none of your concern!”

“Oh, so you can ask me my _personal_ , bottled up emotions but the moment I ask a few questions it’s _none of my concern?_ ” She suddenly yanked on the curtain with startling strength and the rod snapped, the cloth toppling to the ground and fully exposing the rage outside. “You can’t avoid this, Gil.”

“Like you would know,” he ground out, digging his heels into the hardwood “You, who went off and killed people in what would be known as a _Massacre_!” He felt something sour coursing down his veins, making him feel bitter and tight as un-ripened fruit, but he continued. “You like having these powers and being- whatever you are! You didn’t even _try_ to stop it-”

She slapped him.

It burned, and instantly Gil felt his joints lock and his chest tighten, as though his flesh was constricting inward.

“What do you know?” Ava asked darkly, baring her teeth, her hair pricking on end in a wine red cape behind her, magic pulling from her skin dangerously as her illumination began to fill the room. “What could you _possibly_ know about preventing a demon?”

He put his hand on his cheek, feeling the skin pucker from the burn and the tingling sensation of the pact fixing it. He finally looked back at her, and when the lightening flashed it could not battle the sharp light of her skin.

“You want to know why I’m not afraid. You want to know?” She leaned in and he wondered how she was suddenly tall enough to hiss at his throat with baring teeth “Because nothing, _nothing_ , is worse than living with Wrathia Bellarmina for fifteen years.”

There was the smell of something burning, and they both glanced to see the flame Ava had transferred to the lamp was still connected to her, because the metal and glass of the lantern were completely demolished and the flame had begun to eat at the table instead.

“Ava,” Gil backed away from the table “do something!”

“I’m trying,” she had her hand out, and the fire wasn’t spreading, but it was still burning. “I can’t stop it,” she strained to speak. “You do something!”

“ _Me_?” Gil looked around for a bucket of water or something, and Ava snapped “Try using your powers!”

“No, I – I can’t -!”

“You have to!” she pressed as the fire began to drip down the table legs, her fingers trembling to keep it from exploding with her wrath.

“ _No_! I don’t want to become something like you!”

The flame died.

Ava stopped glowing, her skin extinguished, the room filled with the scent of wood smoke. Gil couldn’t speak for a moment, mouthing words noiselessly, before finally saying in a weak voice “Ava?”

The lightning flashed, but the storm had moved further away, the light dulled enough to only show Ava’s form, her arms cradled against her chest as she held herself, as though she might fall to pieces.

“I’m – I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.” He reached out to touch her but hesitated halfway through, his arm dropping.

“You meant it,” she replied in a fragile whisper. “I’m not even a person, huh? I’m a some _thing_.” She sighed, but it shook worse than the house did when the storm was at its fullest, and her voice was deceptively steady afterwards. “I’m going to bed.”

“Ava wait-”

“I’ve heard enough. I get enough of this when I’m sleeping,” he could vaguely see her toss her head idly to get the hair out of her face as she stepped upstairs. There was the creaking of steps when he heard her door shut with surprising ease.

She could have fought him. She could have torn his head off or mutilated him for saying that – and then he recalled that she bottled things up. She buried things; did she bury her anger against him that quickly? Instantly, her emotions suffocated and choked into silence?

How could she live like this?

Then, he recalled her words in that moment: _An extension of death._

He supposed, then, she wasn’t really living like this. She was simply enduring it.

The storm had come to its end. Outside was filled with cold wind and murky water, and Gil went upstairs to sleep.


End file.
